Ciclico: If only they had listened ~ Past

The good thing of being so apart from civilization is that trouble rarely finds its way to Ciclico.

The bad part of being so apart from civilization is that when it does, they have to deal with it all by themselves.

So, that morning a group of five men, including Raz’s father, Urgo, all entered the forest. In their hands, crossbows and homemade spears, which was the best they could manage to do in the time they had. They could not wait to get more weapons out of the village, so they went on with what they had.

“This is not enough to kill a beast of that size, remember, we are here only to find where the beast is hiding. Don’t even think about shooting those arrows, none of you. Understand?” Said Urgo, for the eleventh time, to the scout team before it left. The man stayed behind as he didn’t want to risk getting near it.

Their goal was to stealthily check the entrance of the only cave system of the north, make sure that it was the beast hideout, and then plan out how to kill it before it escaped again.

“Surprisingly, the boar does not seem to like being out in the open, and when he is, he usually runs around a lot, which has an effect similar to an earthquake and destroys everything in its path. Seeing that none of you have heard any signs of it since yesterday, it’s safe to say that it found a hideout and has stayed there ever since.” Said Urgo when preparing the expedition.

It was a simple scout mission. One that didn’t actually need five people in the first place, but Plojem had been especially adamant about Ases and Herm accompanying them. The occasion for a hunt was quite rare, and in his words:

“There will be a time you’ll have to do something like this by yourselves, and the only way to learn something is by doing it.”

Regardless of the simplicity of the mission, regardless of the intentions of anyone involved, no plan survives first contact, and so it all came crashing down when they were nearing the entrance of the cave.

If they had felt a tremor the day before, what they were facing now was a full blown earthquake. When it started, all of them almost fell down, needing a moment to accustom themselves to it. When they did, they noticed the next scariest part of it all.

The tremors were becoming stronger.

They hadn’t noticed it until it was over them. The cave was embedded in the mountain, and to avoid facing the boar if it came out, they had approached from behind it, but that precaution was the thing that screwed them over. The enormous beast sped right through the group, killing the single one of the hunters who could not manage to dodge it in time.

The enormous boar, twice as tall as any of them were, did not stop for a single moment, simply running forward, ignoring the opening of the cave they thought it was going to hide in.

The survivors looked at each other in shock, most of them had not believed the stories from Urgo only to find out that the animal was even bigger than the man had described. They didn’t have time to reunite again, as the trees that had been moved and crushed by the beast started clashing with the closest ones to them, causing a chain reaction.

Another one of the hunters died when one of the trees fell in his head. Plojem, Herm and Ases all scattered in different directions, barely managing to avoid the enormous logs that threatened to crush them too.

When everything finally quieted down, Herm and Plojem reunited again in the center of the destruction trail the boar had left at its wake they hugged. Herm was crying from the shock, neither of them wanting to even acknowledge the two corpses of the people they had known for years and that now were resting a mere few meters apart from them.

They waited there, paying attention to wherever Ases could be, having lost sight of him when disaster struck.

But minutes passed, and for some reason, he did not appear at all.

The reason behind his disappearance was unfortunately simple. Ases had panicked, the row of surprises that struck him all at once sent him in a frenzied run from that place as far as his feet could take him, and by the time he was out of breath and stopped, the trail was nowhere to be seen.

He was hunched down, gasping for air. He leaned against a tree until he recovered enough to look around and recognized how lost he truly was.

His first instinct was panic, but after the scare from the boar, he was too tired to feel panicked anymore. That led to his second instinct, figuring out what to do.

He looked around to see if he saw any landmarks that may indicate where he was. He was not an expert on the forest around Ciclico, but he had been in it a couple of times and had noted some things, like the cave they were going to, or how Ciclico looked in the distance.

Unfortunately, the terrain was flat and the trees far taller than him, making him unable to see anything but green. The next best thing he could think of was to stay where he was. Wandering aimlessly and getting even more lost would not help his situation. At the very least, he stood a chance of being found staying where he was.

The minutes passed, and the forest was stuck in complete silence. It felt wrong to even give a step, as if creating any noise had suddenly become a crime. Ases stayed still until he could not wait anymore. Maybe if he went up a tree, he could see something else?

He started walking towards a tree that had a couple of low branches, a perfect point to grab and pull himself up, but on the way to the tree he stepped on a branch, causing a cracking noise that resonated through the entire forest.

“Stop.”

It was a hush, so low that for a moment he thought that he did not actually hear anything. Fortunately for Ases, it was enough for him to look up and see a woman in a black dress watching over him in one of the branches.

He paralyzed for a moment, recognizing her from earlier. Now that she was a mere few meters apart from him, she looked even more surreal than she did before.

The woman said nothing else, simply signaling him to stay silent. Ases remained like a statue, weighing in the possibility of asking her something, but she simply kept looking at him while indicating to stay silent.

Several minutes later, when he was at the limit of his patience, something in the air changed, and all at once, the chirping of the bugs could be heard again.

“It’s safe now, the boar is away. At this point the slightest provocation can throw him into a frenzy. You really should have stayed in your village, kid.” Said the woman, finally relaxing

A barrage of questions swirled in his mind at the same time, all of them pressing, but one surged first in between all of them.

“Who are you?”

The woman smiled.

“Not the smartest one of the bunch, huh? How about this, I’ll tell you where your family is and we can save ourselves the stupid questions?” She said, refusing to answer his question.

“Wait, you know where they are? Are they safe?”

“They are still in the forest, looking for you. They are safe for now, but they won’t be if the boar comes back. So how about I help you reunite and you all return where you came from, silently, immediately?”

The woman jumped down, standing in front of Ases, looking down on him.

“You know what, this is no longer a question. You’ll return now, the boar is still near, and I don’t need anyone else disturbing my hunting grounds.” Said the woman, leaning down to Ases, until his face was only a few centimeters away from his. “Understood?”

Two things felt absolutely clear now. First, he had no say in the situation whatsoever. He was going to simply follow her, without saying even a single word.

The second thing is that the woman had a disgusting presence around her, unnerving, straight up bone chilling. A presence that assured him immediately that she could kill him with extreme ease, if she wanted to.

She didn’t say a single other word until Ases saw his family in the distance, walking towards where he was.

“Send them this message. If anyone returns to the forest, the boar will end up finding the village, and if he does… let’s just say that the reason there are so few witnesses of this animal is because too few people ever live to tell what they saw.”

The woman left, walking in the opposite direction, losing herself in the trees. When Herm and Plojem found Ases he seemed to be in shock again, and said not a single word until they returned to Ciclico.